Quali-Drone: Quality Inspection
How we help Quali-Drone with quality inspection using drones
Challenge
Bladt Industries is the market-leading manufacturer of large offshore substations for the oil, gas, and windmill industries.
When windmills are placed out at sea, they are exposed to very harsh environments. It is crucial that the surface of all metal components is 100% sealed upon delivery, otherwise, they will quickly rust. Until now, quality inspections have been performed manually, which is dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive.
Solution
In collaboration with specialists in drone technology, precision measurement, and digital twins. Drones will be flown around the various components of the windmills before they get shipped, taking hundreds of photos of the components.
We developed a computer vision model that takes the drone footage and automatically inspects the components, identifies surface damage via advanced AI-based analysis, and visualizes the results on a 3D representation called a digital twin.
Digital twin of a tower section. Drag to rotate. Click a hotspot to inspect.
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Business Value
The new inspection solution will significantly reduce the time consumption and costs of surface quality control of the structures, increase the inspection quality and capacity, as well as provide documentation of identified damage and the subsequent repair of these.
Publication
The methodology behind this case was published as part of a peer-reviewed paper in Applied Sciences: An Operational Image-Based Digital Twin for Large-Scale Structures.